You should expect to hear from a recruiting coordinator within the next 2 weeks to schedule a time for you to come to Redmond, WA. You will have a choice of dates, so please choose one that works best with your schedule (although I recommend dates sooner rather than later). If you don’t hear from a recruiting coordinator in 2 weeks, please send me an email! During your interview day you can expect to meet with 3-5 people for 1 hour a piece, so be sure to get a good night’s sleep~ it’s an exhausting day! You should also be ready to code (a lot!) during your interviews. Make sure that you brush up on your C/C++ skills before you come, as our interviewers love to ask questions related to linked lists, loops, arrays & pointers, etc. If you don’t feel comfortable with that, please let me know ASAP! Your recruiting coordinator will be able to tell you the exact names of the groups you will be interviewing with 4-5 days before you scheduled interview day, so please be sure to ask. You will also come across some problem solving questions so just be sure you fully understand the question & the clues and feel free to take a few seconds to think about the problem & ask clarifying questions before jumping in! Our interviewers like to ask ambiguous questions, so when in doubt, ask clarifying questions! ;-). And be sure to test your code before saying you are done! Also, because of the increased duration and intensity of the second round interviews, I’d like to make you aware of additional resources you can utilize to prepare. These sources come highly recommended from select managers across the company. While we cannot guarantee a positive interview result, please feel free to utilize the resources below to further explore the SDE position and broaden the base of your technical skills. Recommendations: .Net Volume I: The Common Language Runtime, The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering, Introduction to Algorithms, Writing Secure Code, Code Complete: A Practical Handbook of Software Construction, Writing Solid Code: Microsoft’s Techniques for Developing Bug-Free C Programs, Rapid Development: Taming Wild Software Schedules and Modern Operating Systems.It took a couple of days for the news to sink in. Overall, I felt extremely excited at the opportunity and was looking forward to the trip. However, I knew that it wasn’t going to be easy and that I’d have to work really hard to get an offer. After all, I’d be interviewing with the company that practically invented the programming interview and had a reputation for asking some of the most challenging questions of any industry. It was an interview so famous for its difficulty that a book had been written about it. I tried as hard as I could to not think about these things while I got ready for the interview.
About a week after I got word of my interview success, I received an e-mail from a recruiting coordinator who asked me to choose four dates in April for my trip. Though my schools’ recruiter had recommended choosing an earlier date, I wanted to make sure that I had enough time to prepare, so I tried to push it as far back as possible. I responded with my dates and received a confirmation e-mail that said I’d be interviewing on April 19th which gave me about three weeks to get ready. Over the course of the next month, I’d receive a continuous stream of e-mails from the recruiting coordinator regarding my travel arrangements and electronic documents that I had to fill out.
Sometime before my interview, I received an invitation from Microsoft to attend a web cast entitled: “How to Survive the Technical Interview”. The e-mail advertised that the event would “help you improve your chances by giving you tips and tricks for your upcoming Microsoft Interview”. The web cast was hosted by a program manager from the Windows Experience group who presented an extremely informative slide show that talked about how to succeed at technical and non technical aspects of the interview. At the end of the presentation, the audience was able to type in questions which got answered by the speaker. If you’re interviewing on-site with Microsoft, I highly recommend attending this web cast. I have to give Microsoft a lot of credit for doing something like this. I really enjoyed it and it helped put me at ease before the interview.
Click here for Microsoft Interview (part 3)
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